He looked at his hand, counted the coins and put them in his pocket; then, before walking away, he leaned over and whispered one word in my ear.
‘Yekaterinburg.’
And so I turned and walked once more, this time south-west towards the town of Yekaterinburg, somehow already knowing that this would be the end of my journey and that I would find Anastasia at last. The villages I passed through along the way – Tavda, Tirinsk, Irbit – reminded me a little of Kashin, and I rested at some of them, hoping to talk with some of the farmers. But it was no use, they seemed suspicious of me and reluctant to talk. I wondered whether they knew who had travelled through their villages before me, whether they had even seen them. If they had, they said nothing about it.
It took me almost a week to arrive.
Here, the locals were even more anxious than any of the others that I had met on my journey, and I knew for certain that I had reached my destination. It didn’t take long to find someone who could point me in the right direction. A large house at the corner of the town, surrounded by soldiers.
‘A very wealthy merchant owns it,’ the one helpful man who I encountered explained to me. ‘It was taken away from him by the Bolsheviks. No one is allowed to enter.’
‘This merchant,’ I asked, ‘where is he now?’
‘Gone. Paid off. His name was Ipatiev. They took it from him. We locals still call it the Ipatiev house. The Bolsheviks call it the house of special purpose.’
I nodded and walked in the direction he had indicated.
She would be there, I knew it. They would all be there.
1919
PERHAPS THIS WILL sound quaint or old-fashioned, but Zoya and I took rooms in separate houses on the hills of Montmartre in Paris, with opposing views so that we could not even wave to each other before we went to sleep at night or blow a kiss as the last action of the day. From hers, Zoya could look out towards the white-domed basilica of Sacré-Coeur, where the national saint had been beheaded and had died a martyr for his country. She could watch the crowds ascending the steep steps towards the three-arched entryway, hear the chatter of the people as they passed beneath her window walking to and from their places of work. From mine, I could see the peaks of St Pierre de Montmartre, the birthplace of the Jesuits, and if I strained my neck, I could observe the artists setting up their easels in their street studios every morning in the hope of earning enough francs for a humble dinner. We had not intended to surround ourselves with quite so much religion, but the rents were cheap in the dix-huitième and two Russian émigrés were able to blend in without comment in a part of the city already swarming with refugees.
The war was drawing to a close during those months as peace treaties began to be signed in Budapest, Prague, Zagreb and then, finally, in a railway carriage in Compiègne, but the previous four years had seen tens of thousands of Europeans flooding into the French capital, driven there by the advance of the Kaiser’s men into their homelands. Although those numbers were dwindling by the time we arrived, it was not difficult to pretend that we were simply two more exiles who had been forced westwards, and no one ever questioned the truth of the stories we had prepared.
When we first arrived in the city after a painful and seemingly endless passage from Minsk, I made the mistake of assuming that Zoya and I would be living together as man and wife. The idea had been much in my mind as the countryside of my birth began to pass me by and be replaced by cities, rivers and mountain ranges I had only read about, and in truth I was both anxious and aroused by the thought of it. I spent much of the journey choosing the correct words with which I might introduce the subject.
‘We need only take a small flat,’ I proposed, ten miles outside of Paris, hardly daring to look at Zoya for fear that she would recognize the disquiet in my face. ‘A living area with a kitchen attached. A small bathroom, if we’re lucky. A bedroom, of course,’ I added, blushing terribly as I said the words. Of course, Zoya and I had yet to make love, but it was my fervent hope that our life in Paris would provide not just independence and a new beginning, but an introduction to the pleasures of the sensual world as well.
‘Georgy,’ she said, looking across at me and shaking her head. ‘We cannot live together, you know that. We are unmarried.’
‘Of course,’ I replied, my mouth so dry that my tongue was sticking uncomfortably to my palate. ‘But these are new times for us, are they not? We know no one here, we have only each other. I thought perhaps—’
‘No, Georgy,’ she said, determined and biting her lip gently. ‘Not that. Not yet. I cannot.’
‘Then… then we will marry,’ I suggested, surprised that I had not considered this idea earlier. ‘But of course, that is what I meant all along. We will become husband and wife!’
Zoya stared at me, and for the first time since she had fallen into my arms a week before, she let out a laugh and rolled her eyes, not to suggest that I was a fool, but at the foolishness of my suggestion.
‘Georgy, are you asking me to marry you?’ she said.
‘Yes, I am,’ I replied, beaming with pleasure. ‘I want you to be my wife.’ I tried to kneel down, as tradition demanded, but the space between the benches in the railway compartment was too small to make the movement graceful and while I managed finally to prostrate myself on one knee, I was forced to turn my head to look at her. ‘I have no ring to offer you yet,’ I said. ‘But you have my heart. You have every part of me, you know that.’
‘I know it,’ she said, pulling me up and pushing me back to my seat gently. ‘But are you asking so that we might… so that…’
‘No!’ I said quickly, embarrassed that she could think so badly of me. ‘No, Zoya, not that. I am asking you because I want to spend my life with you. My every day and night. There is no one else for me in this world, you must know that.’
‘And there is no one else for me either, Georgy,’ she said quietly. ‘But I cannot marry you. Not yet.’
‘But why not?’ I asked, trying to overcome the note of petulance which was creeping into my voice. ‘If we love each other, if we are promised to each other, then—’
‘Georgy… think, please.’ She looked away, having practically whispered these words to me, and I felt immediately ashamed of myself. Of course, how could I have been so insensitive? It was unconscionable of me to have even suggested the union at such a time, but I was young and drenched in love and desired nothing more than to be with this woman for ever more.
‘I am sorry,’ I said quietly, a few moments later. ‘I didn’t think. It was thoughtless of me.’ She shook her head and I could see that she was close to tears. ‘I won’t… I won’t speak of this matter again. Until the appropriate time, that is,’ I added, for I wanted to be clear that this was a subject which would not be forgotten. ‘I have your permission, Zoya, to speak of it again? At a future date?’
‘I will live in hope of it,’ she replied, her smile returning now.
In my mind, I considered that we were now engaged and my heart filled with happiness at the thought of it.
And so we arrived at the hills of Montmartre and knocked on doors in search of rooms for rent. We had no bags, we had no clothing other than the rags on our backs. We had no belongings. We had little money. We had arrived in a strange country to start our lives over again, and every possession that we acquired from that moment forward would reference this new existence. Indeed, we had brought nothing at all from our old lives, except each other.